ESS SIMS 3 Year Contracts

[enjay]

We've got our invoice for the coming year, but it looks like we can't pay it. Our finance procedures require that we check new supplier bank details by phone, and ESS haven't published any phone numbers :-)

[localzuk]

Well, today's the day... Bromcom is now live for us. SIMS is now a legacy tool in our Trust. Never thought I'd see this day!

[howartp]

We've got our invoice for the coming year, but it looks like we can't pay it. Our finance procedures require that we check new supplier bank details by phone, and ESS haven't published any phone numbers :-)

That's why I saved the mobile phone number our EES person used when I requested call-back.

[mavhc]

Python code can now import from a spreadsheet to Programme of Study, we appear to be making it harder to leave sims by actually using it

[Jonah]

Our final data migration to Arbor happens next Friday before go-live after Easter. Cannot wait to be rid of SIMS!

[supportman]

Well the BETT show was certainly interesting... No Capita Sims or EES stand of course and not a whiff of Sims anywhere. Says it all really.

 

I saw the Bromcom and Arbor stands very busy most of the day, also spoke to a few 3rd party integrators and heard comments like "Everyone is moving to Arbor" and "Yes we integrate with all MIS's now, infact thats where most of our new business is coming from".

 

One side conversation I had with a Bromcom sales rep said that they won an complete Local Authority. Thats 200+ schools. I can't remember which one though.

 

The market is certainly shifting.

Edited March 28, 2022 by supportman

[supportman]

Well, today's the day... Bromcom is now live for us. SIMS is now a legacy tool in our Trust. Never thought I'd see this day!

 

Let us know how you get on. I remember the first day we moved was quite tense but ended up getting about 5 support tickets about how to install the Teacher app on their smartphones with a pin code and then it all went quite and people just got on with using the system. It was an rather enjoyable experience but maybe i'm looking back with rose tinted glasses. Any move has its ups and downs.

Edited March 28, 2022 by supportman

[howartp]

One side conversation I had with a Bromcom sales rep said that they won an complete Local Authority recently. Thats 200+ schools. I can't remember which one though.

https://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/227066-bromcom-win-west-sussex-county-council.html

[bobsmith]

Our go live (Bromcom) is friday and after my initial massive enthusiasm for the move I've had the worst migration experience I've dealt with in my career so far.

 

Ghosted by our deployment manager for the past few weeks - just been told we have to move the final 5 days of attendance data by hand after go live.

 

Pulling my hair out and my blood pressure is starting to climb.

 

I understand that they are swamped with new customers but I'm seriously staring a potential meltdown in the face right now.

[Bromcom_Support_2]

Hi Bobsmith, we are really sorry to hear that you've had this experience. Please can you drop me a PM with your contact details and we'll get someone to give you a call as soon as you are free this morning, to ensure that your issues are resolved.

[mthomas08]

Our go live (Bromcom) is friday and after my initial massive enthusiasm for the move I've had the worst migration experience I've dealt with in my career so far.

 

Ghosted by our deployment manager for the past few weeks - just been told we have to move the final 5 days of attendance data by hand after go live.

 

Pulling my hair out and my blood pressure is starting to climb.

 

I understand that they are swamped with new customers but I'm seriously staring a potential meltdown in the face right now.

 

I had my concerns over SIMs Docs (which we were told could be migrated via 3rd party - but this software ONLY pulls it out of SIMs in a organised fashion). Luckily enough, according to our data manager we just need basic access to them - so we're going to dump them on a network drive.

 

Then there is the alerts (which currently isn't great compared to SIMs) but it can do the job.

 

Our live date is two weeks today.. starting to get a little nervous.

[malbox]

We're also moving - it's not the worst migration experience I've had, but it's also not near the best.

 

My issues are with:

 

• us: I'm doing all the lifting at our end, trying to get staff to understand all that's involved and that I need time and decisions is a struggle.
  
• our deployment manager and getting answers to questions (I wonder if we have the same one - I had to forward on an e-mail several times over 2 weeks to get a reply - now have been assigned a Customer Success Manager)
  
• training:
  
  • trainers are trying to demonstrate stuff with training databases that aren't complete enough (we'll do this report on attendance.... they build the report.... there's no attendance data in the system for the last 2 years)
    
  • the pace of shared webinars is frustratingly slow (I get why, they're shared webinars, but still very frustrating when I have all the things to do and the first 10 to 15 minutes is "here's the online help, here's the agenda for today").
    
  • in some cases it seems they're just following a script, without always seeming to have a strong knowledge of the area
    

   

  [*]"Access" - it would be so helpful to have access to the forums/help, even if a subset, while we're making decisions about setup and the best way to use the system - the documentation just doesn't give you that.

 

I will say that the one piece of 1 to 1 training on assessment that we've had so far (2 more this week, than have the full house) was fantastic. Trainer appeared to know area inside out, allowed us to move at a the faster pace we wanted, answered all our questions, give some good helpful advice - and took less of our time than the less involved Personnel/HR training. It reminded me of the guy who sat on with the salesman when we looked at the more involved parts of the system (also very good).

 

Re: attendance - we had that too with a previous MIS, and really is just a timing issue. For the shift to Bromcom we're fine (I send the data off the last day of term, Our go live date is half way into the Easter break so I can set up and ready for use during the second week).

 

My suggestion would be: export your attendance marks into something that mirrors the bromcom layout, day by day - stick a formula on to flag those with any mark that isn't a present mark, filter to those (by YG if you want). Bulk assign present codes to all (without saving). Run through the list on the sheet and amend those on Bromcom to the right code. Save. You should be able to do a day in sub half an hour as a guess (I know that's still not ideal with everything else going on - but with 2 screens it's very doable. I have to do a logging task every term (student's give us their own Attitude to learning that gets reported - logged on paper sheets) - and as long as you get the "setup" right - it can go surprisingly quickly.

 

Happy to share other ideas/thoughts/help if you'd like - feel free to drop me a message - maybe we can keep each others blood pressures down!

 

 

Our go live (Bromcom) is friday and after my initial massive enthusiasm for the move I've had the worst migration experience I've dealt with in my career so far.

 

Ghosted by our deployment manager for the past few weeks - just been told we have to move the final 5 days of attendance data by hand after go live.

 

Pulling my hair out and my blood pressure is starting to climb.

 

I understand that they are swamped with new customers but I'm seriously staring a potential meltdown in the face right now.

[PotNoodleTech]

Well - went to BETT with a view to looking at MISs. MIS stands were very busy looks like there's no shortage of schools and LAs looking to move away from SIMS.

 

Had a nice demo at Bromcom - it certainly looks next gen compared to SIMS and does almost everything we would want and are currently using third party programs for.

 

I mean, just being web based access from any device anywhere is a big enough perk for me to move.

 

Be interesting to see what they do with regard to Welsh schools and the extra data/exam routines for Welsh Gov we have here. Bromcom doesnt currently support any of this and I don't think Welsh LAs or schools are going to be interested in moving over, until they implement what we need first.

[supportman]

Had a nice demo at Bromcom - it certainly looks next gen compared to SIMS and does almost everything we would want and are currently using third party programs for.

 

I mean, just being web based access from any device anywhere is a big enough perk for me to move.

 

Its not just the web based stuff though, they have smartphone apps for teachers, student and parents which are really good for 90% of the most basic MIS functions for each type of stakeholder. It is a big advancement from Sims.

[bobsmith]

Update after bromcom_support responded to this thread - eventually a nice deployment manager contacted me from bromcom and did his best to answer my outstanding questions. There's certainly a fair bit of manual importing for some of our custom fields from SIMS - and some workarounds on the school day we'll have to implement, but I'm certainly happier now someone has engaged with us.

 

I understand that they've hoovered up a lot of schools in a short space of time - and they weren't to blame for the exodus from SIMS, but communication is absolutely essential when doing these migrations.

 

I also really hope that they develop some more routines for doing data migration - even SIMS 7 years ago managed to do attendance export and import after you went live.

 

I'm sure in a few months time I'll be happily working away on a modern MIS which doesn't make me want to take a baseball bat to the server every other day - but this week I'm not feeling it.

 

Let's hope the company hires fast enough and keeps the quality of support up at the same time to maintain the good reputation they've had up to this point.

[mavhc]

Obviously live export is fine, live import is the problem, how do you know which is the newest data, the one from sims or the one from your new mis.

 

Everyone loves to write things to help you integrate with 3rd party software, no one wants to make 3rd party software work with you, that's more work.

 

If instead of doing an export and then an import they created a sync, problem solved. Except for the problem of making it easy for the customer to switch away from your product.

[mthomas08]

Has anyone managed to connect Bromcom to EduLink?

[supportman]

Has anyone managed to connect Bromcom to EduLink?

 

I asked them at last years BETT show and they said they were looking at it, not sure what the current status is.

 

But why would you want to? Just familiarity?

 

Bromcom has all the tools Edulink has on their web portals but also with the benefit of smartphone apps which we have found are now the preferred choice for most.

[mthomas08]

I asked them at last years BETT show and they said they were looking at it, not sure what the current status is.

 

But why would you want to? Just familiarity?

 

Bromcom has all the tools Edulink has on their web portals but also with the benefit of smartphone apps which we have found are now the preferred choice for most.

 

1) So we didn't go mad and switch everything in the first week

2) the big one - the parents evening section is 10/10 and seamless. Logon - click the event and let it roll on. Automatically goes from one session to another with no input needed. We've not been planning to switch parents over to Bromcom.

 

It was a major point, keep EduLink for a little while longer then switch over (likewise for Parent Pay).

[supportman]

1) So we didn't go mad and switch everything in the first week

2) the big one - the parents evening section is 10/10 and seamless. Logon - click the event and let it roll on. Automatically goes from one session to another with no input needed. We've not been planning to switch parents over to Bromcom.

It was a major point, keep EduLink for a little while longer then switch over (likewise for Parent Pay).

 

Yeh good points.

 

For number 2) we used parentseveningsystem which works via the parents email address in Bromcom. Its pretty much setup for 5mins and forget system and pretty seamless. Also supports online parents evenings which was why we got it in the first place.

[Griff]

Arbor looked fantastic does everything we need just got to convince everyone here. Still not convinced by Bromcom I got burnt at my last school with them. Butchered our migration we ended up back on SIMS within 6 months nightmare experience especially after the go live we were just cut adrift. Normally they get a little punchy on these forums when you criticise them.

[strawberry]

[*]our deployment manager and getting answers to questions (I wonder if we have the same one - I had to forward on an e-mail several times over 2 weeks to get a reply - now have been assigned a Customer Success Manager)

 

Me 3. We were assigned another contact during the last few weeks of the project but a lot of stuff went unanswered.

[jemal]

Has anyone managed to connect Bromcom to EduLink?

 

We just moved to Bromcom this month. Edulink doesn't connect to Bromcom but they advised me this month that they are looking into it. I think they are planning to work with Arbour first. With SIMS, Edulink was fantastic and well worth the money. Bromcom does most of the features but I think I'd like to have stuck with Edulink, the features we used were implemented very well with Edulink and was a nice UI for students and parents, also their support is fantastic. Edulink's video based parents evening was a godsend during Covid, and if we'd stayed we'd probably have used it's integration with the Goverment's notify SMS system which seems very cheap. Hopefully most of the issues with Bromcom are still teething, one real shocker though was that Bromcom doesn't show 'detention' information to students or parents, they have a feature request for it where they say they are considering it. Also we seem to keep having to delete students single-sign on fields and set them up again in order to work with the iOS or Android app, which is bit of a pain. Setting up new accounts for parents on Bromcom is a bit more cumbersome as well.

[localzuk]

Let us know how you get on. I remember the first day we moved was quite tense but ended up getting about 5 support tickets about how to install the Teacher app on their smartphones with a pin code and then it all went quite and people just got on with using the system. It was an rather enjoyable experience but maybe i'm looking back with rose tinted glasses. Any move has its ups and downs.

Well, yesterday was the first day with it in the hands of staff. It has gone well all in all. A few teething issues with logins (more to do with the Somerset Office 365 tenant being retired and people still logging in with it etc...). But everyone has managed to get in. We're rolling out capabilities gradually. So of course we had teachers trying to create seating plans immediately.

 

I've informed all our third parties we've moved today, and we've got Salamander AD due to be installed at the end of the month.

[localzuk]

Our go live (Bromcom) is friday and after my initial massive enthusiasm for the move I've had the worst migration experience I've dealt with in my career so far.

Ghosted by our deployment manager for the past few weeks - just been told we have to move the final 5 days of attendance data by hand after go live.

 

Honestly, this was the same experience for us. We bugged our success manager instead.

 

But yes, any data after the export date needs entering manually into Bromcom. We did this here by using paper registers for the week.

 

Oh. One area that Bromcom REALLY need to improve is their documentation and webinars. We've found lots of stuff on their docs site which is simply outdated. Click on the XYZ button, and that button simply doesn't exist any more. Meant that our data manager has had to create instructions for things from scratch rather than using the documentation on the site.

 

And their webinars need to be edited and chaptered. 3 hours of um, err, I'll have to check that one, is not ideal for us to give to other staff to look at. Sitting our admin staff in front of a live or recorded webinar for 3 hours is basically impossible too - we don't have the staff to cover them, so we need to be able to give them small segments of information.

Edited March 29, 2022 by localzuk